proceed from the fame fource of divine power and wisdom, however inconfiftent with our reafon they may appear. Reason is undoubtedly our fureft guide in all matters, which lie within the narrow circle of her intelligence: On the subject of revelation her province is only to examine into its authority, and when that is once proved, fhe has no more to do, but to acquiefce in its doctrines, and therefore is never fo ill employed, as when fhe pretends to accommodate them to her own ideas of rectitude and truth. God, fays this felf-fufficient teacher, is perfectly wife, juft, and good; and what is the inference? That all his difpenfations must be

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conformable to our notions of perfect wifdom, juftice, and goodnefs but it should firft be proved, that man is as perfect, and as wife as his Creator, or this confequence will by no means follow; but rather the reverse, that is, that the difpenfations of a perfect and allwife Being muft probably appear unreasonable, and perhaps unjuft, to a Being imperfect and ignorant ; and therefore their feeming impoflibility may be a mark of their truth, and in fome measure justify that pious rant of a mad enthusiast, "Credo, quia impoffibile." Nor is it the leaft furprising, that we are not able to understand the fpiritual difpenfations of the Almighty,

mighty, when his material works are to us no lefs incomprehenfible, our reafon can afford us no infight into those great properties of matter, gravitation, attraction, elasticity, and electricity, nor even into the effence of matter itself: Can reafon teach us how the fun's luminous orb can fill a circle, whofe diameter contains many millions of miles, with a conftant inundation of fucceffive rays during thousands of years, without any perceivable diminution of that body, from whence they are continually poured, or any augmentation of those bodies on which they fall, and by which they are conftantly abforbed? Can reafon

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reafon tell us how thofe rays, darted with a velocity greater than that of a cannon ball, can ftrike the tendereft organs of the human frame without inflicting any degree of pain, or by what means this percuffion only can convey the forms of diftant objects to an immaterial mind? or how any union can be formed between material and immaterial effences, or how the wounds of the body can give pain to the foul, or the anxiety of the foul can emaciate and deftroy the body? That all these things are fo, we have visible and indifputable demonftration ; but how they can be fo, is to us as incomprehenfible, as the moft abstruse

abstruse mysteries of Revelation can poffibly be. In fhort, we fee fo finall a part of the great Whole, we know fo little of the relation, which the prefent life bears to pre-exiftent and future ftates; we can conceive fo little of the nature of God, and his attributes, or mode of exiftence; we can comprehend fo little of the material, and fo much lefs of the moral plan on which the universe is conftituted, or on what principle it proceeds, that, if a revelation from fuch a Being, on fuch fubjects, was in every part familiar to our understandings, and confonant to our reafon ; we fhould have great cause to suspect its divine authority; and therefore, had this